Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American actress who began her career in the 1920s as a vibrant Broadway theater star and dancer. Initially moving to New York City to pursue ballet, Hopkins faced a career shift after a broken ankle forced her to transition to acting and musical theater. At age 20, she started as a chorus girl in New York City and made her Broadway debut in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue in 1921. Throughout the mid-to-late 1920s, she evolved from musical chorus roles to serious dramatic performances, with a notable milestone being her role in the 1926 stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Hopkins lived a bohemian lifestyle in New York, rejecting conventional expectations for women of the era and engaging with intellectuals and writers like John O’Hara. She also ventured into film with a dramatic short film titled The Home Girl (1928) before signing with Paramount Pictures in 1930, marking the beginning of her Hollywood career. Her 1920s journey laid the foundation for her later success as a pre-Code film star.